Tuesday, March 07, 2017

Harvard Law Administrators Accused Of Stealing Money Meant For Students With Disabilities

Two former Harvard Law School administrators are accused of stealing thousands of dollars from an account meant to help students with disabilities.

In a criminal complaint the I-Team obtained, Harvard University police allege Meg DeMarco, 33, and Darris Saylors, 32, used the funds to purchase laptops, iPads, DVDs, jewelry, and even a few X-rated items. In all, the police investigation said the women stole about $110,000.

According to the court documents, things started to unravel in November 2013 when a new budget manager at the law school noticed some discrepancies.

Both DeMarco and Saylors resigned from their positions at the Dean of Students office while a lengthy police investigation ensued.

The probe revealed purchases of dozens of laptops, iPads, iPods and other electronics. Court documents say a subpoena to Apple traced the items to DeMarco’s home in Chelsea and Saylors’ apartment in Cambridge. Police also discovered items at the homes of Saylors’ friends and family in California, Washington and Tennessee.

Court documents say DeMarco used a mobile card reader to deposit school money directly into her banking account.

Meantime, Saylors is accused of frequenting Amazon for a long list of online purchases like purses, clothing and jewelry. The investigation even found she used the Dean of Students purchasing card to buy sex toys.

Police say she then tried to hide the purchases in budget documents by changing the descriptions to things like, “textbooks for disabilities accommodations.”

“What procedural safeguards were they lacking that allowed something like this to happen?” Vu wondered.

In a statement, Harvard Law School spokeswoman Michelle Deakin said the criminal charges stem from an internal financial audit. “As a result of this matter, the Law School implemented additional layers of controls governing the use of its credit accounts and purchasing protocols,” Deakin wrote.

Saylors, who now lives out of state, did not respond to calls or emails requesting comment.

However, the I-Team recently caught up to DeMarco as she arrived for work at Babson College. Instead of a defense, the former Harvard Law administrator offered an apology.

“It was a big job and I made mistakes,” DeMarco told the I-Team. “I never intended to harm the university. I’m very sorry and will do everything in my power to rectify the situation.”

Saylors and DeMarco are scheduled to be arraigned in Cambridge District Court on Wednesday.

Elsie Tellier is involved with the Harvard College Disability Alliance, a group that advocates for student accommodations. Tellier, a sophomore with cystic fibrosis, said funds allocated for those purposes are essential.

“Without it, we couldn’t be students,” Tellier told the I-Team. “Hearing this is just outrageous and extremely upsetting. I really hope this is a wake-up call for Harvard to take better account of where the money is going.”

President Donald Trump called on Congress Tuesday to pass an education bill that funds school choice so that disadvantaged children of all races can choose whatever school is right for them, calling education “the civil rights issue of our time.”

“Education is the civil rights issue of our time. I am calling upon Members of both parties to pass an education bill that funds school choice for disadvantaged youth, including millions of African-American and Latino children,” Trump told the joint session of Congress.

“These families should be free to choose the public, private, charter, magnet, religious or home school that is right for them,” Trump said.

He pointed out a woman in the audience named Denisha Merriweather, who “struggled in school and failed third grade twice.” “But then she was able to enroll in a private center for learning, with the help of a tax credit scholarship program,” he said. “Today, she is the first in her family to graduate, not just from high school, but from college. Later this year she will get her masters degree in social work.”

“We want all children to be able to break the cycle of poverty just like Denisha, but to break the cycle of poverty, we must also break the cycle of violence,” he said.

“The murder rate in 2015 experienced its largest single-year increase in nearly half a century,” the president said.

He noted that 4,000 people were shot in Chicago last year alone and that the murder rate this year “has been even higher.”

“This is not acceptable in our society. Every American child should be able to grow up in a safe community, to attend a great school, and to have access to a high-paying job, but to create this future, we must work with –- not against -– the men and women of law enforcement,” Trump said.

“We must build bridges of cooperation and trust –- not drive the wedge of disunity and division. Police and sheriffs are members of our community. They are friends and neighbors. They are mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, and they leave behind loved ones every day who worry whether or not they'll come home safe and sound,” he said.

The president said Americans must support law enforcement and crime victims.

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. — Students and professors at Middlebury College were ashamed and embarrassed after an explosive protest Thursday night that has forced the school to reconsider what it means to embrace free speech.

The normally peaceful campus of Middlebury College, with its mountain backdrop and elite reputation, was shaken last week after violent student protesters shut down a talk by controversial conservative social scientist Charles Murray and injured a Middlebury professor who was with him.

Many on campus, including the college president and leaders of the student organization who invited him, disagree vehemently with Murray’s views on social welfare programs and race, but on Saturday they said the campus failed in its duty to exemplify how to debate unpopular ideas with civility.

Donald Trump’s presidency formed the backdrop for the protest, students said. The election has made people on campus dig their heels in ideologically, said Sabina Haque, a junior from Westford, Mass. They’re less willing to accept conflicting viewpoints, she said.

A group of demonstrators at Middlebury College in Vermont “aggressively confronted” guest speaker Charles Murray.

Middlebury’s president, Laurie L. Patton, said the incident demonstrates that elite schools are subject to the same dynamic that challenges the rest of the country — an inability to debate differences constructively.

“The liberal arts college is an idealized place. The actual liberal arts college is something where all of human differences are on full display,” Patton said.

Students and professors burrowed their faces into scarves as they rushed between buildings on a gray, frigid day on the Middlebury campus. They agreed the campus feels different than it did a week ago.

As they walked into the library, Elias Guerra and his friend Javier DelCid discussed the talk, which they did not attend.

“It’s essential that we be exposed to that way of thinking whether we agree or not,” said Guerra, a junior from Brooklyn, N.Y. “When people talk about the Middlebury bubble, that’s the Middlebury bubble.”

But the bubble is not unique to Middlebury. Since Trump’s election as president, and even in the long campaign that led to it, colleges across the country have struggled to balance free speech with an atmosphere that makes students feel safe and accepted.

Murray’s visit put the campus on edge even before he arrived. Patton made clear she disagreed with his views but welcomed him nevertheless. She offered remarks on stage Thursday, before chaos broke out in the auditorium.

Professors held discussions with students during the week before his visit, and some said students had questions ready to ask Murray during his appearance at Wilson Hall in the McCullough Student Center.

“This is a tragedy,” said Matthew Dickinson, a political science professor, who said Murray will now be considered a martyr rather than an extremely polarizing author.

Murray is best known as the author of “The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life” and “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010.” He has theorized that social welfare programs are doomed to hurt those they aim to help, and, most controversially, wrote of ethnic differences in measures of intelligence. The Southern Poverty Law Center describes Murray as a “white nationalist” who believes in the intellectual and moral superiority of white men.

When Murray was unable to speak because of the protesters’ interruptions Thursday night, administrators took him to a video studio in the same building and broadcast the event online.

But some protesters began pulling fire alarms, temporarily shutting off power to the live stream. When Murray finished his speech, he left the building with Allison Stanger, professor of international politics and economics, and other college officials, but was met by a group of protesters who wore bandanas to cover their faces.

College spokesman Bill Burger said he believed they were “outside agitators” who had been barred from the event, rather than Middlebury students. Flanked by security officers, Murray, Stanger and Burger moved toward Burger’s car.

By that point, more than 20 demonstrators had gathered. One threw a stop sign with a heavy concrete base in front of the car Murray was in, and several others rocked, pounded, and jumped on the vehicle. One protester pulled Stanger’s hair and injured her neck. She was taken to a hospital, where she was treated and released.

The turn of events was perhaps most upsetting to those who invited Murray to campus, the student chapter of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.

Club leaders said they disagree with Murray’s views but wanted him to discuss his 2012 book “Coming Apart,” which explores the white working class in America.

“Free speech shouldn’t just be free for those who are with you,” said Phil Hoxie, a senior from California who studies economics and is a leader in the club. “It should be free for everyone.”

Hoxie and other club members said there is a problem at Middlebury, and they think it’s the same problem that plagues the nation: People are afraid to talk to each other about their differences of opinion.

Students have lost the ability to challenge one another in the classroom, they said, and in some cases are not encouraged to do so by professors.

“Students are afraid to be truthful in the classroom,” said Ivan Valladares, a senior from Brooklyn, N.Y., who is also a club leader.

Patton did not dispute the students’ diagnosis. Colleges must do more to encourage open dialogue,she said.

“We’re trying to find an educational space where people can have the tough conversations, and I think that’s incredibly difficult,” Patton said in an interview with the Globe Saturday afternoon.

“What this episode, I think, has shown, is that it is even harder to do, that in fact the task of a liberal arts education is even harder to do in the 21st century,” Patton said.

Harvey Silverglate, a Cambridge civil liberties attorney, said there’s a difference between the students disrupting Murray’s lecture inside and the individuals who damaged the car.

“I draw a serious line between rioting and other nondisruptive showing of disapproval,” he said. “One hiss and one boo is free speech. Twenty-five hisses and boos in a row is disruption and is illegal.”

Stanger called Thursday the saddest day of her life but said she doesn’t regret the experience. “Please instead consider this as a metaphor for what is wrong with our country,” Stanger wrote on Facebook. “And on that, Charles Murray and I would agree.”

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Background

Primarily covering events in Australia, the U.K. and the USA -- where the follies are sadly similar.

The only qualification you really need for any job is: "Can you do it?"

Particularly in academe, Leftism is motivated by a feeling of superiority, a feeling that they know best. But how fragile that claim clearly is when they do so much to suppress expression of conservative ideas. Academic Leftists, despite their pretensions, cannot withstand open debate about ideas. In those circumstances, their pretenses are contemptible. I suspect that they are mostly aware of the vulnerability of their arguments but just NEED to feel superior

"The two most important questions in a society are: Who teaches our children? What are they teaching them?" - Plato

Keynes did get some things right. His comment on education seems positively prophetic: "Education is the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.”

"If you are able to compose sentences in Latin you will never write a dud sentence in English." -- Boris Johnson

"Common core" and its Australian equivalent was a good idea that was hijacked by the Left in an effort to make it "Leftist core". That made it "Rejected core"

TERMINOLOGY: The English "A Level" exam is roughly equivalent to a U.S. High School diploma. Rather confusingly, you can get As, Bs or Cs in your "A Level" results. Entrance to the better universities normally requires several As in your "A Levels".

The BIGGEST confusion in British terminology, however, surrounds use of the term "public school". Traditionally, a public school was where people who were rich but not rich enough to afford private tutors sent their kids. So a British public school is a fee-paying school. It is what Americans or Australians would call a private school. Brits are however aware of the confusion this causes benighted non-Brits so these days often in the media use "Independent" where once they would have used "public". The term for a taxpayer-supported school in Britain is a State school, but there are several varieties of those. The most common (and deplorable) type of State school is a "Comprehensive"

MORE TERMINOLOGY: Many of my posts mention the situation in Australia. Unlike the USA and Britain, there is virtually no local input into education in Australia. Education is mostly a State government responsibility, though the Feds have a lot of influence (via funding) at the university level. So it may be useful to know the usual abbreviations for the Australian States: QLD (Queensland), NSW (New South Wales), WA (Western Australia), VIC (Victoria), TAS (Tasmania), SA (South Australia).

There were two brothers from a famous family. One did very well at school while the other was a duffer. Which one went on the be acclaimed as the "Greatest Briton"? It was the duffer: Winston Churchill.

Another true modern parable: I have twin stepdaughters who are both attractive and exceptionally good-natured young women. I adore both of them. One got a university degree and the other was an abject failure at High School. One now works as a routine government clerk and is rather struggling financially. The other is extraordinarily highly paid and has an impressive property portfolio. Guess which one went to university? It was the former.

The above was written a couple of years ago and both women have moved on since then. The advantage to the "uneducated" one persists, however. She is living what many would see as a dream.

The current Left-inspired practice of going to great lengths to shield students from experience of failure and to tell students only good things about themselves is an appalling preparation for life. In adulthood, the vast majority of people are going to have to reconcile themselves to mundane jobs and no more than mediocrity in achievement. Illusions of themselves as "special" are going to be sorely disappointed

On June 6, 1944, a large number of young men charged ashore at Normandy beaches into a high probability of injury or death. Now, a large number of young people need safe spaces in case they might hear something that they don't like.

Perhaps it's some comfort that the idea of shielding kids from failure and having only "winners" is futile anyhow. When my son was about 3 years old he came bursting into the living room, threw himself down on the couch and burst into tears. When I asked what was wrong he said: "I can't always win!". The problem was that we had started him out on educational computer games where persistence only is needed to "win". But he had then started to play "real" computer games -- shootem-ups and the like. And you CAN lose in such games -- which he had just realized and become frustrated by. The upset lasted all of about 10 minutes, however and he has been happily playing computer games ever since. He also now has a First Class Honours degree in mathematics and is socially very pleasant. "Losing" certainly did not hurt him.

Even the famous Marxist theoretician Antonio Gramsci (and the world's most famous Sardine) was a deep opponent of "progressive" educational methods. He wrote: "The most paradoxical aspect is that this new type of school is advocated as being democratic, while in fact it is destined not merely to perpetuate social differences, but to crystallise them." He rightly saw that "progressive" methods were no help to the poor

"Secretary [of Education] Bennett makes, I think, an interesting analogy. He says that if you serve a child a rotten hamburger in America, Federal, State, and local agencies will investigate you, summon you, close you down, whatever. But if you provide a child with a rotten education, nothing happens, except that you're liable to be given more money to do it with." -- Ronald Reagan

I am an atheist of Protestant background who sent his son to Catholic schools. Why did I do that? Because I do not personally feel threatened by religion and I think Christianity is a generally good influence. I also felt that religion is a major part of life and that my son should therefore have a good introduction to it. He enjoyed his religion lessons but seems to have acquired minimal convictions from them.

Why have Leftist educators so relentlessly and so long opposed the teaching of phonics as the path to literacy when that opposition has been so enormously destructive of the education of so many? It is because of their addiction to simplistic explanations of everything (as in saying that Islamic hostility is caused by "poverty" -- even though Osama bin Laden is a billionaire!). And the relationship between letters and sounds in English is anything but simple compared to the beautifully simple but very unhelpful formula "look and learn".

For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

"Now, what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts. Nothing else will ever be of service to them ... Stick to Facts, sir!" So spake Mr Gradgrind, Dickens's dismal schoolteacher in Hard Times, published 1854. Mr Gradgrind was undoubtedly too narrow but the opposite extreme -- no facts -- would seem equally bad and is much closer to us than Mr Gradgrind's ideal

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

A a small quote from the past that helps explain the Leftist dominance of education: "When an opponent says: 'I will not come over to your side,' I calmly say, 'Your child belongs to us already. You will pass on. Your descendents, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time, they will know nothing else but this new community.'." Quote from Adolf Hitler. In a speech on 6th November 1933

I am rather pleased to report that I am a lifelong conservative. Out of intellectual curiosity, I did in my youth join organizations from right across the political spectrum so I am certainly not closed-minded and am very familiar with the full spectrum of political thinking. Nonetheless, I did not have to undergo the lurch from Left to Right that so many people undergo. At age 13 I used my pocket-money to subscribe to the "Reader's Digest" -- the main conservative organ available in small town Australia of the 1950s. I have learned much since but am pleased and amused to note that history has since confirmed most of what I thought at that early age.

I imagine that the the RD is still sending mailouts to my 1950s address!

Discipline: With their love of simple generalizations, this will be Greek to Leftists but I see an important role for discipline in education DESPITE the fact that my father never laid a hand on me once in my entire life nor have I ever laid a hand on my son in his entire life. The plain fact is that people are DIFFERENT, not equal and some kids will not behave themselves in response to persuasion alone. In such cases, realism requires that they be MADE to behave by whatever means that works -- not necessarily for their own benefit but certainly for the benefit of others whose opportunities they disrupt and destroy.

Popper in "Against Big Words": "Every intellectual has a very special responsibility. He has the privilege and the opportunity of studying. In return, he owes it to his fellow men (or 'to society') to represent the results of his study as simply, clearly and modestly as he can. The worst thing that intellectuals can do - the cardinal sin - is to try to set themselves up as great prophets vis-à-vis their fellow men and to impress them with puzzling philosophies. Anyone who cannot speak simply and clearly should say nothing and continue to work until he can do so."

Many newspaper articles are reproduced in full on this blog despite copyright claims attached to them. I believe that such reproductions here are protected by the "fair use" provisions of copyright law. Fair use is a legal doctrine that recognises that the monopoly rights protected by copyright laws are not absolute. The doctrine holds that, when someone uses a creative work in way that does not hurt the market for the original work and advances a public purpose - such as education or scholarship - it might be considered "fair" and not infringing.

Comments above from Brisbane, Australia by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) -- former teacher at both High School and university level

There are also two blogspot blogs which record what I think are my main recent articles here and here. Similar content can be more conveniently accessed via my subject-indexed list of short articles here or here (I rarely write long articles these days)

NOTE: The archives provided by blogspot below are rather inconvenient. They break each month up into small bits. If you want to scan whole months at a time, the backup archives will suit better. See here or here